Inadequate health infrastructure, in addition to shortage of trained personnel, has resulted in glaring gaps in health coverage and outreach of services, mainly in rural areas. The Economic Survey says India at present is short by 20,486 sub-centres, 4,477 primary health centres (PHCs) and 2,337 community health centres (CHCs). What’s worse is that basic facilities like proper buildings, hygienic conditions, electricity and water supply were still found absent in many existing health centres with many PHCs and CHCs not providing even the guaranteed services such as in-patient services, operation theatres, labour rooms, pathology tests, X-Ray facilities and emergency care. High absenteeism among personnel manning PHCs and CHCs is also a major bottleneck.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee allocated Rs 22,300 crore for the health sector in his 2010-11 budget, an increase of over Rs 2,700 crore over the previous fiscal year. The Minister said the country was set to conduct a national health survey next fiscal and this would benefit in more than one way. "The findings of the survey should be of immense benefit to major public health initiatives, particularly the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), which has successfully addressed the gaps in the delivery of critical health services in rural areas," he said.

Concerned over the indiscriminate use of emergency contraceptive pills sold across the country, the National Commission for Women (NCW) has written to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Medical Council of India seeking their opinion in curbing the promotion of these pills. In a statement issued here, the NCW has said that it had been brought to their notice that wide scale advertisement campaign in favour of oral emergency contraceptive pills was being carried out by the pharmaceutical companies.

The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), a human rights organization with a General Consultative status with the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council, has pointed out conditions of mass deprivation, especially hunger, malnutrition and distress migration, in Madhya Pradesh in its country report on India to the UN Human Rights Council. The report, expressing concern over the right to food situation in India, points out the shocking state of affairs in Madhya Pradesh regarding several human development indicators, especially malnutrition among tribals.

The National Urban Health Mission — has been shelved for the time being and will not be launched during the present 11th five-year plan. Union health secretary K Sujatha Rao said that NUHM would now be launched during the 12th plan. Rao told TOI, “We have so far focused on energizing India’s rural areas with NRHM. Sinve there are just two years left in the 11th plan (2007-2012), NUHM will be launched post-2012 now.” She added, “Over the next two years, we will sharpen NUHM’s execution plan and get its strategy right. Once both NUHM and NRHM run simultaneously, we can call it India’s Unified National Health Mission.”

Speakers at a State-level judicial colloquium here on Saturday expressed concern over the declining number of girls in the country and attributed the same to practice of female foeticide. Calling upon all stakeholders to check the evil practice, the speakers were of the view for sincere implementing the provisions of Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition and sex Selection) Act. Inaugurating the colloquium organized by the Orissa State Legal Services Authority and Orissa High Court Legal Services Committee with collaboration of Orissa health and family welfare department and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), State Governor M C Bhandare said in a knowledge society, a woman should have the same dignity as that of a man.

To boost female health and hygiene in rural India, the Union government is working on a scheme to provide women living below poverty line (BPL) with free sanitary napkins. The scheme, which will eventually supply “highly subsidised” sanitary napkins to women above the poverty line, is likely to be rolled out gradually, in three to six months from now. Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Saturday that the government intended to take care of the sexual and reproductive health needs of adolescent girls through a community-led programme for behaviour change by promoting the use of sanitary napkins.

The world’s biggest children’s nutrition program, called the Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) runs in India. Started in 1975, the program was limping along till the Supreme Court ordered its universalisation in 2004. As a result, the government has repeatedly promised that it will extend the program to all 14 lakh habitations in the country. Analysis done by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) shows, that there is a wide gap between the financial allocations currently being made and the need for running such a massive program smoothly. As the government scrambles to meet the Supreme Courts directions, the state of decay and inefficiency is sought to be papered over with gross figures.

India has issued more than one crore smart cards under the health insurance scheme for the poor since the scheme started April 2008. "This is perhaps the largest effort ever to use Information Technology tools in rural areas," Minister for Labour and Employment Mallikarjun Kharge said. Under the scheme, the card is given to a family of five persons providing cover for hospitalisation up to Rs 30,000.

Nearly 639 million people in the country do not have access to essential medicines even though the pharmaceutical industry is one of the best performing sectors in Indian business and medicines manufactured in India are exported to 200 countries. Stating this here on Thursday, Dr. Amit Sengupta, joint convener of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, one of the organisers of a two-day national workshop that begins here this Friday, regretted that 50 per cent to 80 per cent of the people do not have access to essential medicines.